'I made it out': Seton Hall's Fuquan Edwin beat the streets to become basketball star

By JEFF ROBERTS

STAFF WRITER |

The Record

PATERSON -- The handgun was pointed at Fuquan Edwin’s back.

Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard on Fuquan Edwin (above): “Coming from Paterson, working hard, being a guy that most people said couldn’t play at this level. And now he has a chance to get drafted."

The gunman had snuck up behind him that rainy night in the Alabama Projects. And he announced himself with just three words.

“Gunshots were something I was used to. There were a lot of gunshots,” Fuquan Edwin, who played at Paterson Catholic, said about growing up in Paterson's Alabama Projects.

“We want everything.”

There was no time to think. There was barely time to make a choice: Empty his pockets and pray. Or run.

That was the night Edwin faced his own mortality in the projects he called home. That was the night he ran for his life.

“We just took off, not looking back at anything,” said Edwin, who had been walking home with a friend. “He didn’t fire.”

The Seton Hall star told the story recently while overlooking the site where the projects once stood, his first visit since their 2010 demolition. He has come a long way from the Paterson Catholic teen who had been held up more than five years ago.

And as he took it all in, one thought kept cycling through his mind.

“I made it out,” he said.

Edwin will begin his senior season Saturday when the Pirates (15-18, 3-15 in 2012-13) host Niagara, despite being held out of an exhibition game last week for a violation of team rules. The preseason All-Big East second-team selection already appears on NBA draft boards as a second-round prospect. And Thursday he was chosen as a team co-captain.

The road he traveled to get here began amid violence and poverty in the foreboding Alexander Hamilton public housing development -- dubbed the Alabama Projects because it sat near Alabama Avenue.

He witnessed the complex’s open-air drug market operate day and night. He watched a man get shot just outside his first-floor bedroom window.

And he hid in the bathroom when police in riot gear stormed through his apartment door looking for his oldest brother. They aimed their weapons at his uncle, who in the chaos of the moment still clutched a TV remote control.

“I look at Fuquan as a great success story,” Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said. “Coming from Paterson, working hard, being a guy that most people said couldn’t play at this level. And now he has a chance to get drafted.”

Edwin ranked second in the Big East last season in steals (2.39 per game), one year after leading the nation (3.0). The 6-foot-6, 215-pound wing finished eighth in the conference in scoring (16.5) in 2012-13, fifth in 3-point shooting (.412) and 16th in rebounding (5.8).

“I think he’s one of the best players in the league,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “He can defend anybody. He’s a scary scorer.”

But Edwin still carries the projects with him. Everything he witnessed, everything he experienced in the 14-building, 498-unit complex still drives him, said Rutgers’ guard Myles Mack, a friend and fellow Paterson native.

Edwin acknowledged they made him “who I am today.” Hungry. Hard-working. Quiet. Humble.

“That atmosphere was tough,” said Edwin, 22, whose family was forced to move when the complex was emptied, but remains in Paterson. “I would just be walking and I would find drugs like it was nothing.

“I’m talking about dope. Rocks. Heavy drugs. When guys would get chased, they would get rid of it.”

Situated just off Route 80, the projects were home to one of New Jersey’s busiest drug hubs. It operated like a drive-through for suburban addicts.

Residents feared the gangs. The dealers. The junkies who lurked in the stairwells. And stray bullets.

“Gunshots were something I was used to,” Edwin said. “There were a lot of gunshots.”

That environment took its toll. “The majority” of Edwin’s boyhood friends fell prey.

“Some are locked up. Some are dead,” he said. “I had to separate myself from the guys I hung out with every day. But that’s what it took from being on the corners in the projects.”

‘Something special’

The buzz began when he was only in junior high.

Edwin’s developing game grabbed the attention of the rough crowd that played hoops in the projects’ recreation center. The rest of Paterson took note when he started as a Paterson Catholic freshman and joined the powerhouse Playaz AAU program.

“I knew something was special around seventh, eighth grade,” said JeBarr Spencer, his city league coach. “You started to see that this is pretty serious.”

Basketball became Edwin’s sanctuary.

His mother, Anisa Thomas, raised three boys as a single parent and worked overnight shifts as a nurse.

So the game kept him occupied. It gave him a direction. And it gave him role models beyond his oldest brother, Ryhen Thomas. He had looked out for Edwin and first inspired him to pick up a basketball. But Thomas was caught up in the street life and recently was released from prison after serving nine months on a drug charge.

Edwin’s father -- who is in his life now -- also had been incarcerated “a couple of times” when his son was young.

All too aware of the cautionary tales -- the lost souls of Paterson who had been anointed the next big thing -- Edwin found friends in the game who would become like brothers.

He met his best friends, Shaquille Thomas and Jermaine Peart, playing hoops. And Spencer -- just 22 when he began coaching Edwin’s city league team -- often would bring him home to his own mother’s house. He remains a friend and trusted advisor.

And basketball gave Edwin status, even if he never acted on it.

Project residents would tell Spencer, “Get him out of here,” when he arrived to pick up Edwin for games and tournament.

“People knew he had a shot,” he said.

Edwin had seen others blow their chances through all the powerful temptations. Bad grades. Girls. The streets.

So he worked. And he still works.

He spent much of last summer in the Eastside High gym, training with Mack and Louisiana-Monroe’s Jayon James among others. He wanted to improve his handle. His range. Create his own shot.

“He’s gotten a lot better this year,” Mack said.

That’s bad news for the Big East.

“He can beat you in different ways and can influence the game at both ends of the court,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said.

‘A little hope’

The police wore armor the day they barged through Edwin’s apartment door.

Their guns were drawn.

“Because of how bad the projects were, when the police come to your house, they come in full force,” Edwin said. “They’re not coming to negotiate.”

The front door -- already broken -- burst open as cops surged in.

“Get on the ground!” they yelled.

Edwin and his uncle fled for the bathroom, his uncle still holding a TV remote.

“They put the gun on him, yelling, ‘Put it down! Put it down!’ Like they were about to shoot him,” Edwin said. “He was like, ‘It’s just a remote!’ The cops were literally about to shoot him.”

Edwin knew who the police had come looking for -- his oldest brother -- although he said they had the wrong man in that instance.

But it was just another message received, another reminder that the streets always win. It made Edwin more determined not to follow his brother’s path.

“To be totally honest, I’ve never seen him be nervous. It doesn’t matter how big the stage is,” said Spencer, who moved up with Edwin to become an assistant at Paterson Catholic. “And I’ve never seen him struggle, fail in this basketball thing.

“Growing up in that Alabama, toughness just comes with it."

In his quiet, understated way, Edwin has become a city role model.

He remains humble, Spencer said, despite his rising profile.

Edwin still attends some of his old city league youth team’s games, sitting on the bench. And he’s on pace to graduate this spring with a degree in social and behavioral sciences.

“All the kids know Fuquan. it gives them a little hope,” Spencer said. “The biggest thing is this guy is going to graduate. Little Fuquan from the projects is about to graduate for free. That is a wonderful thing.”

The projects are long gone. But the ghosts of those buildings still stick with Edwin. They still motivate him.

“I always think about it to this day, ‘What if the projects were still up? How would it be? What if?’” he said. “I don’t have an answer.”

“Gunshots were something I was used to. There were a lot of gunshots,” Fuquan Edwin, who played at Paterson Catholic, said about growing up in Paterson's Alabama Projects.

“We want everything.”

There was no time to think. There was barely time to make a choice: Empty his pockets and pray. Or run.

That was the night Edwin faced his own mortality in the projects he called home. That was the night he ran for his life.

“We just took off, not looking back at anything,” said Edwin, who had been walking home with a friend. “He didn’t fire.”

The Seton Hall star told the story recently while overlooking the site where the projects once stood, his first visit since their 2010 demolition. He has come a long way from the Paterson Catholic teen who had been held up more than five years ago.

And as he took it all in, one thought kept cycling through his mind.

“I made it out,” he said.

Edwin will begin his senior season Saturday when the Pirates (15-18, 3-15 in 2012-13) host Niagara, despite being held out of an exhibition game last week for a violation of team rules. The preseason All-Big East second-team selection already appears on NBA draft boards as a second-round prospect. And Thursday he was chosen as a team co-captain.

The road he traveled to get here began amid violence and poverty in the foreboding Alexander Hamilton public housing development -- dubbed the Alabama Projects because it sat near Alabama Avenue.

He witnessed the complex’s open-air drug market operate day and night. He watched a man get shot just outside his first-floor bedroom window.

And he hid in the bathroom when police in riot gear stormed through his apartment door looking for his oldest brother. They aimed their weapons at his uncle, who in the chaos of the moment still clutched a TV remote control.

“I look at Fuquan as a great success story,” Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said. “Coming from Paterson, working hard, being a guy that most people said couldn’t play at this level. And now he has a chance to get drafted.”

Edwin ranked second in the Big East last season in steals (2.39 per game), one year after leading the nation (3.0). The 6-foot-6, 215-pound wing finished eighth in the conference in scoring (16.5) in 2012-13, fifth in 3-point shooting (.412) and 16th in rebounding (5.8).

“I think he’s one of the best players in the league,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “He can defend anybody. He’s a scary scorer.”

But Edwin still carries the projects with him. Everything he witnessed, everything he experienced in the 14-building, 498-unit complex still drives him, said Rutgers’ guard Myles Mack, a friend and fellow Paterson native.

Edwin acknowledged they made him “who I am today.” Hungry. Hard-working. Quiet. Humble.

“That atmosphere was tough,” said Edwin, 22, whose family was forced to move when the complex was emptied, but remains in Paterson. “I would just be walking and I would find drugs like it was nothing.

“I’m talking about dope. Rocks. Heavy drugs. When guys would get chased, they would get rid of it.”

Situated just off Route 80, the projects were home to one of New Jersey’s busiest drug hubs. It operated like a drive-through for suburban addicts.

Residents feared the gangs. The dealers. The junkies who lurked in the stairwells. And stray bullets.